Chapter Text
I notice it before I notice her face.
It’s the first thing that reaches me, like a reflex I never unlearned.
Two hands.
Her left rests on the table between us, relaxed, open. There’s a ring there now. Bigger. Brighter. The kind people recognize immediately. The kind that makes strangers smile and say congratulations without asking questions.
Her right hand moves when she talks. When she laughs. When she reaches for her glass.
And there it is.
The one I know.
The thin band she never explained to anyone. The one she twists when she’s nervous. The one she said once was just comfortable. Habit. Something she forgot to take off.
She’s wearing both.
Left and right.
Promise and memory.
Future and something that never learned how to leave.
I don’t say anything. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to. The room is full of noise anyway, plates clinking, voices overlapping, the low hum of a place that expects happiness from us. I sit across from her like I haven’t memorized this version of her already. Like I don’t know the way her right hand always moves first, like it’s answering a question before it’s been asked.
She’s talking about the wedding.
Of course she is.
Small details. Colors. A timeline. She’s good at details. Good at making things sound reasonable. Right. She talks with that careful brightness she uses when she doesn’t want anyone to worry. When she doesn’t want to think too hard about the shape of what she’s chosen.
I nod in the right places. I smile when I’m supposed to.
But my eyes keep drifting back.
Right hand.
The ring catches the light. It always did. It always sat there like it belonged, even when nothing else made sense. Even when we never gave it a name. Even when we pretended it didn’t mean anything because meaning would have asked too much of us.
She notices me staring. Just for a second.
Her fingers still.
She doesn’t hide it. She never has.
Instead, she curls her hand slightly, like she’s protecting something fragile. Like she’s aware, suddenly, sharply, that I can see it. That I’ve always seen it.
There’s a flicker of something in her eyes then. Not guilt. Not fear.
Recognition.
The kind that hurts because it says: I know. I remember too.
The room keeps going. Someone laughs too loudly. Someone asks if we’ve ordered yet. Life does that, keeps moving, even when it shouldn’t. Even when two people are quietly standing on the edge of something they never finished falling into.
She says something about flowers. About her aunt’s opinions. About how time is moving too fast. Her voice stays light, practiced, like she can keep the week from swallowing her if she keeps it organized enough.
Then, for a second, it slips.
Her gaze catches mine and doesn’t let go.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she says.
It’s quiet enough that no one else hears it as anything more than a sweet thing to say. A normal thing. Best-friends-being-best-friends.
But it lands in me like a confession that’s been filed down until it looks harmless.
My throat tightens. My hands stay still. I don’t reach across the table, even though every older version of me would have.
I meet her eyes anyway.
“There’s never a version of this where I wasn’t,” I say.
The words leave my mouth before I can soften them.
They aren’t dramatic. They aren’t pleading. They’re just… true. The kind of truth you don’t say unless you’re tired of lying to yourself first.
Aiah’s breath catches. It’s small, but I see it. Her right hand twitches toward the ring like it’s a reflex, like she needs something solid to hold onto.
She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t have to.
The silence between us fills with everything we don’t say. With the years that don’t fit neatly into any story she tells other people. With the things we called friendship because it was easier to carry in public.
Someone calls her name from across the room. A cousin waving, smiling, asking something about the schedule.
Aiah blinks like she’s waking up. Her face shifts back into the version that knows how to be fine.
She turns away.
The room swallows her again.
And the ring on her right hand catches the light as she moves, as if it’s amused by how easily we can be interrupted. As if it’s been here long enough to know we always get pulled back before the sentence can finish.
Still here, it says.
Still yours.
Even now.
I swallow. I take a breath I don’t need.
Seven days.
That’s what’s left between now and the life she’s chosen.
Seven days of smiling and standing close and pretending the past is something you can set down just because the future has arrived.
I look at her again, from across the table, across the noise, across the careful distance we keep pretending is normal.
For a moment, just one, she looks back.
And in that glance, the whole week shows itself like a bruise under skin.
Then she smiles for someone else, answers a question, reaches for her glass with her right hand.
The ring flashes once more, unapologetic.
No one else notices.
No one else knows how loud it is.